


Transport (i.e. everything else is just)

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, M/M, Mystery, Other, Reboot, Sherlock is a Spaceship, artistic liberty, first-person, futuristic "technology"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is a spaceship. John Watson is his passenger. Together, they solve crimes. It's weird.<br/> (This is a REBOOT from the original fic of the same name, so this will all be new material.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Space Junk

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is loosely based on the Ann McCaffrey brainship series. VERY LOOSELY BASED, in that I've recycled the basic concept of a human being a spaceship. This does not follow any of McCaffrey's original plots or storylines. Also, this fic is a reboot of a fic that once went by the same name. I realize that I got pigeonholed into writing a fic that I really didn't want to write, and it was beyond saving. So, as they said in that glorious digital cartoon... REBOOT!

It’s been forty-five days since the installation, and Sherlock Holmes is dead.

The sentence should have been pronounced days, weeks ago, but Molly didn’t have the heart to give up. All signs point to failure, though, an installation gone wrong. The ship, her ship (in every way but on paper) has been dead for forty-five days, and so it’s high time they agree to stop waiting.

Molly still hasn’t given up. She has, however, been given fair warning by Lestrade that he’ll be seeing buyers. That a ship this size in this economy will never sell, nobody could afford to crew it. That it will most likely be torn apart and sold for scraps.

“Alright, Sherlock,” she says, walking through the ship’s halls for what could very well be the last time. There’s no telling when the buyers will start coming in. “If you can hear me, you should probably listen.”

She’s tired now. There’s no enthusiasm in her voice like in her earlier pep talks. Forty-five days is a long time to wait. Maybe too long. Maybe she has given up. Still, it doesn’t matter now.

“Greg’s going to be shutting her down soon. No money left to keep her running. Buyers are coming in. She’ll be ripped up, sold as scrap. Listen to me. I know you’re stubborn. I know what you’re like. Your brother’s told me all about how you won’t do a thing that anyone wants you to do.”

God, she’s going to miss this ship. It’s been her home for over a decade. As she walks, she runs her hand along the wall, caressing it.

“And that’s great. That’s really wonderful, being your own person like that. But listen.” Molly stops at one of the central comm. units on the wall and leans in close, her mouth right up against the speaker. “Cut it out. You hear me? Stop it. This’ll be the end of you. Are you getting that? And it’s even bigger than you, because it’ll be the end of me, too. Does that mean anything to you?”

She’s crying now. Her whole life was riding on this gamble, and she’d lost.

“Your brother was wrong. You’re not stubborn. You’re completely selfish. How dare you. Thanks to you, I’m out of a job now. I have nowhere to live. I have absolutely nothing, thanks to you. So if you can find it in yourself to do just one thing for another human being besides yourself, you’ve got about two minutes left. So please. Please, Sherlock.

“I’m not asking for much. Just a flashing light would be nice, just a blip, let me know you’re still in there. I mean, you’re not, I know you’re not, but if you could just, please...”

She’s crying too hard to speak now. She leans against the wall and sags to the floor. She’s crying so hard she almost misses the faint beeping that comes from the comm. unit above her head.

Molly wipes her eyes and composes herself. It must be time, then. “That you, Greg?”

The voice that replies is, to say the very least, not Greg. It sounds like a drowning man just come up for air, gasping and faint and straining for breath.

“You just... had to bring... Mycroft into this...”

“Sherlock? Sherlock, is that you?” Molly jumps to her feet, feeling absolutely wild with emotion. She just might be hallucinating. This can’t be happening, it’s been two long, forty-five days too long for an installation like this to take.

“Yes,” Sherlock gasps, his voice coming through so weak that Molly has to press her ear to the speaker to hear clearly. “I’m here... I’m online...”

*

I'm woken by an emergency alarm. Which is to say that I’m not woken at all so much as I am simply terrified into wakefulness.

“What is it, what’s going on?” I stumble into my shoes, then wrestle my feet into a pair of trousers. Wrong order, I notice with a twinge of regret. I’d never been this slow in the army. I’ve gotten lazy.

I grab my shirt and emergency air supply as I scramble into the hallway, and am in the process of untangling both of them when I see that I’m the only one in the hallway.

My arms fall to my sides, the breathing mask clattering to the floor at the end of its plastic tubing.

“Sherlock,” I sigh.

“Emergency,” he chimes back excitedly, his voice coming from the nearest wall-mounted comm. unit.

“It’s not an emergency if it’s not, you know, actually an emergency. I think there are laws against this.”

“Come on, John! Where’s your sense of excitement?”

“Oddly enough, it flees at the sound of an emergency alarm.” Along with my testicles.

“You’re not even the least bit interested?” He sounds disappointed. I get that quick stab of fear that he’s going to leave me if I don’t at least feign an interest, so I bite.

“Alright. Tell me.”

“I was going to tell Lestrade and the lads in the cockpit that it’s just space junk that I’d like to investigate.” Tell, he says. Not ask. The chain of command is rather fuzzy on this particular vessel, as I’ve come to learn during my time here. While Sherlock’s authority is still beneath that of the captain the crew and those whose jobs are supposed to involve piloting this ship of theirs, Sherlock is the ship.

Thus, said ship is basically a rogue sentient flying space machine, with the temperament of a spoiled child and enough horsepower and technological reign to pretty much ignore any rule laid down. But actually he really isn’t a sentient machine at all, but a human being, with a brain the likes of which not many can match controlling pretty much every mechanical aspect involved on this vessel.

The Baker. Someone must have been on a strange kick when naming this one. I often wonder if there are any Butchers and Candlestick Makers floating around the universe. I think about these things late at night, when Sherlock isn’t keeping me up by shouting at me through the comm. unit in my quarters. I wonder what I’d do if I ever did see a ship with one of those names. I’d be interested to see how I would react. Probably violently. After all, I’m still supposed to have PTSD.

“What’s it really?” I ask him, wrestling my head through my shirt.

“Shipwreck.” Sherlock sounds positively delighted. God help us all.

“How’s that different from space junk?”

“There’s still someone on board. I’m definitely picking up signs of life. Or sign of life, in any case. There’s only one.”

And there’s the kicker, folks. Them’s the breaks, as they say. Signs of life, actual human life signs, on what turns out to be half a ship, the rest of it probably burned or blasted away. There is literally nothing keeping any oxygen inside this vessel, what with an entire one of its sides just ripped open, and yet there’s life.

And because I’m a doctor, I suppose it’s my responsibility to go and check up on this rather sorry excuse of a life I know I’m about to find. And because I’m friends with Sherlock, because I’m enough of an idiot to tolerate this sorry excuse of a friend, I’d be going anyway, even if I wasn’t occupationally obliged.

Off I go, then.

*

My life wasn’t always this exciting. It had its moments, though. I mean, I did go to war. Yet another useless border dispute on planet earth, seemingly futile what with all the territory left to fight over in outer space. But I didn’t think that way back then. I had my team, I had my men, I had lives to save, a gun on my shoulder, and the sun beating down, every day, for years on end. Never ending. No sympathy for the little ants it was frying underneath the ozone.

And then I had a hole blasted through my shoulder, and I found myself being sent back home. I also found myself with a limp, which I discovered once I was well enough to get out of bed. It didn’t make much sense, considering I hadn’t even been injured in my leg. But the limp was there, and my doctors gave me a cane and sent me on my way. Slowly.

I also had a pretty rough case of PTSD -- screaming nightmares, cold sweats, a tremor in my hand that complicated things slightly. That, I could understand. I had been through a war. I’d watched friends die, in incredibly horrifying ways. It made sense. The limp was the only thing that didn’t.

My therapist suggested I keep a blog, so I did. Sort of. Didn’t really write in it. But I sure kept it. She also suggested I get in touch with old friends. So I did. Purely unintentionally, and actually by accident. I ran into an old friend from university, Mike Stamford, and by ran I mean, of course, walked slowly and unevenly.

Stamford was alarmed to find me limping through the park like a cripple. (I was alarmed to find him nearly five stone heavier than I remembered him.) Still, my apparently significant transformation wasn’t enough to keep him from dropping a few names, then making a few calls, which led to a slightly uncomfortable interview, which led to me getting a job as a doctor on a spaceship called Baker. (Butcher, Candlestick Maker...)

It all happened rather quickly. Not as fast as the shot that ripped through my shoulder. But fast enough.

*

“If you could refrain from wobbling that camera around like an alcoholic, I could get a better read of this place.” I’ve got him in my pocket now, a little portable communicator I bring with me when I leave the ship so he can still pester me.

“The camera is on my helmet, Sherlock. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m pulling myself through a shipwreck, there’s not much gravity to speak for, I’m . The camera is going to move.”

“Try holding your head still,” he says.

“I’d rather try and watch my footing, thanks.”

“Well stop it! I’m getting nauseous.”

“Oh? What’s this? The great Sherlock Holmes is feeling seasick? A bit queasy, are you?” This is fun for me. I love picking on him. “Well don’t worry. As a doctor, I can assure you that you don’t even have a stomach any more, let alone control of your esophagus, either voluntary or not. What are you going to do, spew out some engine fuel into the black?”

Yes, it’s petty. Poor sod doesn’t have a human body anymore, poor sod plugged his brain into a spaceship, poor sod has free reign over practically every digital and mechanical force within metaphorical reach. I figure that it helps keep him grounded. He hasn’t been human in a long time. He forgets, sometimes, how to talk to people. I don’t mind so much, but others do. So I guess that’s as much my job as being a doctor; keeping Sherlock humble.

“Just wait,” Sherlock grumbles, but the thought must placate him somewhat because he stops complaining after that. He just barks out directions every so often, until I find myself opening the somewhat airtight door of a central room and finding a young man tangled up in some safety netting on a wall.

He’s wearing an emergency oxygen mask, but the tank on his back must be nearing it’s last leg because underneath the clear plastic, the man’s lips are blue.

“Let’s get you some air, then, shall we?” I say, kicking off from the floor and propelling myself towards him. His eyes are glassy, and I don’t like the way his head is lolling to the side like that. “I’m a doctor. John Watson. Here to help.”

“What’s that?” Sherlock says, finally deciding to contribute again. “Pick-up line?”

“That’s Sherlock,” I tell the man, who may or may not be lucid enough to be put off by the rude voice coming from my trouser pocket. “Just ignore him, focus on me.”

While I talk, I’m dislodging my spare O2 pack and strapping it around my new patient’s arm. He hardly pays me any mind. “Alright, you’re not going to be able to breathe for a couple seconds while I disconnect the tubing from the old canister. Hang on.”

Again he’s already so deprived of actual breathable air that he hardly seems to notice while I readjust his breathing mask to the new supply. “There you go. That should start feeling better soon.”

“Great,” I say with sincerity once I observe a healthier rise and fall of the young man’s chest, the blue beginning to ebb from his lips. “Let’s get you back to my ship. You’ll besafe, I promise. You’re alright. All set?”

Fortunately, he doesn’t answer. Doubly fortunate is that Sherlock doesn’t stoop so low as to answer me either. And even a third bit of fortune is that I’d connected a line to the docking bay from my spacesuit when Sherlock and I had first embarked, so instead of wandering the bowels of a shipwreck to get back to Baker, I just have to flip a switch and let technology reel me in. I have our stray held tight against my chest, and Sherlock strangely quiet in my pocket.

It’s a quick ride back to the docking bay, and by the time we make it back I see my patient showing signs of awareness. Good thing. Less chance he’s suffered permanent brain damage. Still, I’d like to get him somewhere that is a little more homey and conducive to recovery than a docking bay.

Except Sherlock’s sealed us in. “Don’t bring him on board yet,” he says before I’ve even had then chance to ask him what the hell he’s on about.

“He’s suffered oxygen deprivation for I’m not even sure how long yet. I need to get him to medical.”

“It’s only been forty-eight hours, and how do we know it’s not his fault that ship’s floating out there in the first place? Only one survivor, could be foul play. Keep your mask on, John, and hold onto something. As soon as the truth outs, I’m sending _him_ out the airlock.

At this, my patient makes a wild break for freedom, lunging for the inner door. He doesn’t quite make it, between his legs giving out and me grabbing hold of his trouser leg.

“Ease up a bit, Sherlock. We’re trying to get him to like us,” I say, while helping the young man back up against the wall. He slides down to the ground with his knees up, and hides his face in his hands.

“Why? What could he possibly gain from such a useless sentiment?”

As always, Sherlock’s grasp on humanity astounds me. “Dunno. A sense of calm, I suppose? The comfort of knowing you’re not a madman? Maybe if he stops thinking you’re going to throw him out the airlock, he’ll actually give us some useful information, which I think you’re actually just trying to scare out of him by doing this.”

“So, you’ve managed to see through my plot,” Sherlock drones, unimpressed. “Nevertheless, I am still undecided on the subject of the airlock.”

“Well you don’t have to say it out loud!”

With a muffled groan, the man shrinks back even further against the wall. I adjust my pant leg -- old habit -- and kneel down in front of him. He keeps his face hidden, the oxygen mask still firmly sealed over his mouth and nose. I lay a hand gently on his shoulder and give him a reassuring pat.

“It’s alright. You’re safe here.”

He lifts his head a bit, to shoot a suspicious look at my trouser pocket. He’s obviously not forgotten Sherlock’s threat, then.

“He’s not actually going to throw you out. He just wants to know about the wreck, and you were the only survivor.”

The man whimpers, his face disappearing again behind his palms. “Oh god,” he mumbles, breath fogging up the oxygen mask. “Oh god, oh god, oh god...”

“Listen, he’s crazy,” I say, keeping my voice light. “Really, don’t even worry about him. But he does control the locks on all the doors, and I really would like to get you to medical so we can take proper care of you. So if you could tell us anything at all, anything you know about the wreck, and then we can get you taken care of...”

He’s obviously in shock, and seems too traumatized to be helpful. I sympathize.

“Nice tactic,” Sherlock says. “Telling him I’m mad. That’ll win him over.”

“Alright, shut up,” I hiss at my pocket before turning back to the man. “I know it must have been very scary for you back there. But listen. This madman here was just scared too.”

I pointedly ignore the snort that comes from my pocket and continue. “He thought you were a threat. Only survivor found on a shipwreck, not talking to anyone about what happened. The madman in my pocket has a lot of people to look after, here on our ship. He was just protecting them. You understand, yeah?”

Slowly, the young man turns his head from the wall, back towards me. His eyes are huge and glassy with tears, and I can feel him shaking beneath the hand I still have on his shoulder -- he’ll need to go to medical soon. Just as soon as he gives Sherlock something to work with.

And then the mask fogs up, and the man’s eyes meet mine, and he says, in a voice rough from a dwindling emergency air supply; “Dogs. Th-they were dogs...”

And then he passes out.

“Well done, Sherlock,” I say as I gather the man in my arms. I’ll not be keeping him from medical any longer. “We’re done now. Really. Think you can unlock this door now, please?”

A loud click echoes through the bay.

“And I’ve already dispatched a medical team,” Sherlock says. “They should be here in seconds.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Cheers for that.” It’s almost thoughtful of him.

“Dont thank me. I need you.”

“Of course you do. Back to the wreck?”

“By your leave, Captain.”

“But we don’t have anything to go on,” I say, after my patient is lifted onto a stretched and whisked away by the medical team. “He didn’t give us anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock’s voice is unusually cheerful as it rings out from my pocket. In fact, he sounds downright enthused, which only just confuses me. “He’s only just given us the best lead we could ask for!”

“Did he now?” I say, seriously doubting this. The man was in shock, didn’t know what he was saying. There’s no way dogs could have done this to a spaceship, let alone one of this size and -- no, any spaceship. It wasn’t possible. We have nothing to go on.

“Well,” I say, as I refill my oxygen tank. “I better not find any dogs on board. I’m out if we do. I mean it, Sherlock.”

Because of course Sherlock’s probably made some connection that I would never have seen. He always does. And I can’t help but follow him.


	2. Space Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I fog up the mask of my spacesuit with my tired exhale of utmost patient and restraint. Sherlock is testing me today.

The thing is, nobody ever told me about Sherlock. Not a single member of the ship’s crew ever took me aside and told me anything along the lines of “by the way, just wanted to let you know that this particular spaceship you’re on happens to be piloted by a human brain,” probably because I would have replied with something like, “of course it is. isn’t that how pilots work? with their brains?” and then I imagine they would have responded with something that would have gone a bit like, “no, see, the ship is piloted. by a human brain. by a brain that is still very much a human being in everything but the physical.”

I imagine I would have run and never looked back.

Probably that’s happened before. Probably that’s why they were so desperate to hire a doctor that they gave the job to me, as much of a mess that I was at the time.

In all honesty, though, had I been told that the ship I had just signed on to work for was piloted by a human brain, and that said human brain would talk to me as if it were still a human person, I would have fucked right off. And then I would have been out of a generally nice job.

But still. Considering the shock I got when I eventually did find out about Sherlock and what he was, a little warning would have been nice.

Our first meeting went a bit like a ghost story or horror film. I’d been limping down a hallway, hopelessly lost, when someone spoke behind me.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The actual words that they said had yet to fully register with me; I was mostly just startled by the voice. I hadn’t realized anyone had been following me. I hadn’t heard any footsteps. Then again, I wasn’t listening for footsteps either, so I turned around to see who it was.

There was no one there. I was alone.

“Did somebody just...?” I said to the empty hallway. There was literally no place someone could have hidden, except in any of the rooms lining the hall. But I hadn’t heard a door open or shut. I would have definitely heard someone running off to hide in a room. “Sorry... what?”

I thought I might have been hallucinating. Yes, that would have looked nice on my growing list of human failings.

But then the voice came again. “Afghanistan or Iraq?” Same question, more impatient, only this time I saw that it was coming from the nearest communications unit, a box mounted on a wall not two feet from where I was standing. I gave the hallway one last look around, turning on the spot, before I limped over to the comm. unit, leaned in close and said (in a clear voice, into what had to be the microphone), “Hello?”

I waited, but there was no reply. Perhaps I’d imagine the whole thing, my mind cooking up some hallucination where another person actually had an interest in what was going on in my life. Or perhaps I’d been the witness to a technological error and had simply been accidently let in on a small part of a conversation happening on a different frequency than I was meant to hear.

So I limped away. I got about halfway down the hall when the question came again.

“Afghanistan? Or Iraq?” This time, the man’s tone was like that of a parent trying to get their young child to pick which cereal they wanted to eat for breakfast already, this game has gone on long enough, Daddy has to go to work now so just pick one already god damn you.

So I turned back around and walked, fast as I could, cane echoing on the floor, back to the comm. unit, leaned into the speaker once again and said, “Sorry, are you actually talking to me?”

“Do you see anyone else around?” said the man on the other end of our conversation. Unexpectedly.

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t realize...” Not used to being talked at through a speaker on the wall by the picture of nobody. Also, I hadn’t expected him to be able to say anything that wasn’t a country in the Middle East. “It was Afghanistan. Is that it?”

Randomly bombarding someone in a hallway instead of walking up to them like a normal person, introducing yourself and then talking in circles until what you actually want to say becomes relevant to the conversation had thrown me for a bit of a loop, so I was feeling a bit touchy.

Apparently, that was it. I got no reply, no explanation, and didn’t hear from Sherlock again for another two weeks, when he woke me up with violins.

*

Sherlock is considerate enough to install some temporary gravity pads to the bottom of the shipwreck before my next embarkment. That is, he is generally incapable of being considerate, but because his wanting steadier camera work and my wanting to be able to stand on my own two feet happened to coincide, I am, this time, able to benefit from his selfishness too.

He probably has no idea, poor sod. He’s incredibly self-centered like that. But cameras are the only way he can see things now, I suppose, so I can’t really fault him for wanting to be able to see clearly. I don’t ever hold it against him that he isn’t a person anymore. I give him shit for it, of course, take the piss, things like that. But I don’t hold it against him.

It’s always nice to get a break, though.

Which is not to say that there is anything restful about exploring the wreckage of a ship that, from my findings, must have been carrying at least 300 people when it met its (and their) untimely demise. Sherlock keeps me from wallowing too long in the tragedy of the whole thing. He constantly barks orders at me, telling me where to go, directing me how to turn my head, noting all the things I should inform him of if I happen to come across them before he spies them through his little camera.

“You’re anxious about something,” Sherlock says, breaking the stream of ordering me about.

“Am I?” I say, amusedly, as I pick my decidedly un-amusing way through the charred remains of a wall.

“Yes. Increased heart rate, your hands keep clenching and unclenching in your gloves, and I’m having to repeat myself with telling you where to go. 

“Maybe you’ve crossed a wire,” I tell him, “and are actually picking up Mrs. Hudson’s signals instead.

“Come on, John! Use your brain! For once!” He actually thinks I’m serious. God, I love messing with him like this. He really hasn’t got a clue.

I’ve only seen one photo of Sherlock, as he was, when he was a man. I still don’t know what he is now, what he’s had to become in order to also become a spaceship. I know there’s a room in the heart of the ship that no one’s allowed to go inside, a secret room that houses Sherlock’s brain, as well as whatever is left of him. But I don’t know anything about that room. I’ve just seen one photo.

Captain Lestrade showed it to me, back when I’d learned the truth about the Baker and demanded further explanation. High cheekbones, strange, alien eyes and an unruly mop of black curls on his head, his mouth turned down in blatant disapproval of having his picture taken. Sherlock as he once was.

In times like these, to soften the blow of the actual situation, I think of that man in the picture. I imagine him in a room somewhere inside the Baker, sitting in front of multiple screens and a massive control panel, through which he can see, hear and control the technology in every part of the ship.

I doubt the reality is anywhere near as delicate a picture as my imagination paints. But that’s not for me to know. And now I’m anxious about two things instead of just one.

“If you must know, if it hasn’t actually occurred to you, I’m thinking about the man I rescued from the wreck this morning.”

Best not to tell Sherlock about my other anxiety. I doubt it would go over well, telling him that I imagine what he looks like locked away in the room he doesn’t let anyone inside. And besides, he’s told me on numerous occasions to think of him purely as advanced technology. Transport, he’d called himself, and that was all. 

“Why would you be thinking about him?”

“Because I only just rescued him a few hours ago,” I explain to Sherlock. “I’m worried about whether he’s going to be okay.”

“Why should you even care about that? It’s not as if you knew him.”

I fog up the mask of my spacesuit with my tired exhale of utmost patient and restraint. Sherlock is testing me today. He has to be.

Sherlock doesn’t think like I do, or like anyone I’ve ever met. He needs to be reminded of things, sometimes, human things like compassion, sympathy, empathy, all kinds of emotions of mine that he doesn’t understand. I really do suspect that he’s spent so long working out equations and functions of a spaceship that he’s really forgotten how to be human. Except sometimes, I wonder if Sherlock has just always been detached like this, and being a spaceship has tapped into and used his otherwise offensive personality quirks to their advantage.

“I’m feeling sorry for him, Sherlock. Think about it. He’s been traveling aboard this ship for how long? (“seven months, give or take a week,” Sherlock interrupts me to say) This accident, this wreck we’re picking at (“this wreck _you’re_ picking at”) is the result of something that killed everyone but the man we found. That sort of thing is traumatic, Sherlock. I understand what he’s gone through, and I feel sorry for him.”

“Trauma,” Sherlock considers. “l don’t know.”

“When I first came aboard -- you remember?”

“Limping on a perfectly sound sound leg, nightmares, screaming in your sleep, picking fights with machines...”

“I’d been through a trauma, Sherlock.” God, that still isn’t easy to admit. My therapist back down on Earth would be so proud to see me finally coming to terms with what I’d been through. That is, if I had actually kept in touch with her instead of running off without a word to work on the Baker. I wonder what she thinks has happened to me. Anyway. “You want any samples to test, or are we just about finished?”

*

There was blood all over me. On my hands, oozing between my fingers, staining my fatigues, pooling in the sand beneath me. People were screaming, guns firing. There was blood in my hair, in my mouth. Flesh and blood and bone exploded into a shower of gore that rained down, a summer storm, while the sun beat hot and relentless.

A part of me realized that I was having a nightmare. How could I not? I’d woken up screaming more nights than not since returning home from the war. I’d left the battlefield behind, only to find it had followed me home, and with a vengeance.

So yes, when I heard the screams, I knew that they were mine. I knew the sobbing was mine, as were the prayers and curses rushing out together in the same breath. I knew what was happening to me, but the panic was still too real and immediate to ignore. Another scream ripped itself from my throat even as it catapulted me into wakefulness.

And then I noticed the violins.

There was classical music playing, a violin piece, and it was coming from the comm. unit on the wall by the door. My quarters being just large enough to fit a bed and small dresser, I didn’t require my cane to stumble to the delinquent box of technology, and to the -- what was that, Mozart? -- spilling forth from it. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, blinking through the last of my tears, and hit the most prominent switch I could see, which I assumed would turn the music off.

It didn’t. It affected no change whatsoever. I flipped the switch a few more times in case there was lag, but nothing happened. So I tried another switch, and another, until there were no more switches left to try. I moved on to the buttons next. Not one of them had any effect.

Then I moved on to using brute force.

“God damn you buggering... fucking...” I actually was about to start hitting it when a voice came through from the other side.

“Everything alright?”

“Oh, Christ, I’m...” It was him. The same voice from the hallway, I knew it instantly. Sherlock, but I didn’t know that much yet. I needed a moment to catch my breath; he’d absolutely terrified me, voice coming out of nowhere like that when I was already wired enough as it was. “Do you have access to all of these? Is that it?”

“I do,” he said.

“Oh.” I could feel the burning shame creeping up the back of my neck, my cheeks prickling. “What are you, like... system maintenance? Management?”

“You could say that. Although I would highly advise against it because it would be both misleading and highly inaccurate. Most likely you’d make yourself look like even more of an idiot than you already are.”

“Right, that’s it,” I said, just about ready to go back to shouting.

“Most people are idiots,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m not insulting you.”

“Sounds like you are,” I snapped.

The room fell silent, including the violins. I suppose he didn’t feel the need to defend himself any further at that point. It was a lost cause from the start.

“Well, whatever your job is, I think something’s wrong with the radio on this,” I said, not sure if he was even listening anymore. “This music came on out of nowhere and I couldn’t turn it off.”

“You wanted to turn it off,” he said, sound half like he was asking, and half like he wasn’t sure what I was saying to him.

“I was sleeping. It woke me up.”

“Your nightmares of Afghanistan woke you up,” he said. “Or, more accurately, your own screaming woke you up. Not my music.”

“Your music?”

“Well, not _mine_ , not my compositions. But I played the track for you, after your screaming interrupted what _I_ was doing. We can call it even.”

“Why the hell are you playing old music for me while I’m sleeping?”

“My intent was to calm you down. Classical music has been known to do that. I see now that it was a failure.”

“Wait, really?”

Apparently there was more to the music than just another way the universe was conspiring against me. “Who are you?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, as if that explained anything at all.

“Okay... You probably already know who I am, so... I guess it’s nice to meet you? Thanks for the music, well, for trying.” Sherlock didn’t respond to that. Already I was learning the sort of things that don’t even penetrate through his thick skull, or at least the metaphore of him having one. Social niceties, for example. Gratitude. Appreciation. Introductions. Explanations were beyond him as well.

“I was just wondering,” I continued. “How did you know about Afghanistan?”

From there, Sherlock launched into a description of minutae so detailed and so unlike anything I was able, at that time, to concieve that I had to sit back down on my bed to wrap my head around it.

“That... was amazing.”

“You really think so?” He actually sounded surprised.

So I told him, "Yes, of course. It was brilliant."

That was the real start, for me. I still had no idea who Sherlock was, what he was, and I was still haunted by my own trauma. But from then on, after my nightmares woke me up, there was always classical music to help me go back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> tbc...


End file.
